Insights Into The Process Of Providing Feedback To Students On Open Ended Problems

One of the challenges of implementing open-ended problems is assessing students’ responses, as the open-ended nature of the problems allow for multiple appropriate, “good” responses. In particular, formative assessment—giving the students feedback on intermediate solutions—can be particularly challenging when it is hoped that students will understand and respond to the feedback in ways that indicate learning has taken place. This study is part of a larger project that focuses on the feedback that the students are given as they iterate through multiple drafts of their solutions to Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs). In this paper, we report on findings related to Graduate Teaching Assistants’ experiences in providing their students with feedback. Two cases are presented: the experiences of a Teaching Assistant who is new to MEAs, and therefore new to the process of giving feedback on MEA solutions, and the experiences of a more experienced Teaching Assistant.